Giganto Mexia by Kentaro Miura – Available Here

One hundred million years ago lands us firmly in the center of what is commonly known as the Cretaceous period, and what is more uncommonly known as the “DEAR-LORD-GOD-FUCK-NO-PLEASE-DON’T-MAKE-ME-GO BACK-THERE” period. It is a time where the Tyrannosaurus, Spinosaurus, and Carnotaurus bro-ed out to pretty much kill and conqueror with the same enthusiasm I bring to my thrice daily caffeine injection. And while those formidable carnivores laid fear into the corners of the grounded world the Thalassomoden (imagine the mind of Charles Bronson locked in a Brontosaurus proportioned predatory fish) and Tylosaurus (imagine a shark mated with your worst nightmare and then grew fifty feet long) dominated the ocean like my fiancée dominates an excel spreadsheet.

I start this review off with that particularly colorful description because Giganto Maxia is supposedly set 100 million years in the future. So the above paragraph to present day in terms of evolutionary potential is up for grabs. When I read things like that I get excited. It is literally a blank check for every terrifying and bizarre thing a creator can think of.

This excited me when I first heard about. I read Miura’s dark fantasy epic Berserk with a fervor I had for few things in middle and high school. Its strangeness and horror were something so new and compelling to me that I immediately fell in love. So the question I so looked forward to finding answered was what fresh hell hath nature deigned to throw into the lap of the dregs of humanity?

Answer: Giant, carnivorous waterbears, and anglerfish that now live in sand.

Oh. Good.

Don’t stress yourself too hard, Miura.

Throw in some respectable art and a by the number me-too Attack on Titan and you are left with a pretty, but uninspired thing that reeks of writer’s block.I’m increasingly certain that whatever creative coherence Miura had as a cartoonist has been lost to age, commercialism, and  an utter failure to understand the demands of both story or genre.

You can tread water for as long as you like, but eventually, you have to come to shore or die at sea and I’m not sure what will be more embarrassing for Miura.